


THE ITCHIES

by thoughtsdemise



Series: Ghost of the Machine: Writing Challenge [1]
Category: Transformers all media types
Genre: Gore, Horror, Infestation, Limb removal, Scraplets, Violence, being eaten alive, gotm:wc, pulling off “skin” to dig out the bitty “buggies”
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 19:38:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12306288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsdemise/pseuds/thoughtsdemise
Summary: It is important to get your internals and systems checked out regularly by a local trained medical professional.





	THE ITCHIES

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hope you read the tags *HINT, HINT*. =)

It started in his thigh.  A sort of zip-zap sensation that ticked its way slowly but with growing speed through a minor circuit system and into the surrounding substructure.  Like a chipped gear in a joint that was catching and refusing to complete a rotation, the damage grew with each failed and aborted turn.

He twitches his leg as if to shake the feeling loose, thinking it was just a compressed bit of line that was giving way to rust.  He growls his engine with a dull clunk as other mechs cast a weary optic at him.  Their optics watching as he rakes his digits against his plating to stop the itch.  He glares back at them, lifting his hand away to shake off the curls of scraped paint shavings that clung to them.

He is quick to duck into an alley when he spies a field medic going to each member of the recently returned patrol he had been apart of.  He snorts.  “Medics.”  He didn’t need any medical scan from some know-it-all non-fighter to tell him he was in perfect working order given the outpost there were stationed at close to the Valley of Decay and Rust Sea.

Digits dig deeper gouges into the thick metal of his thigh as the zip-zap itch had began to feel more like a blaster metal burn.  He casts a distasteful look at the field medic before heading off to his bunker.  He digs at his thigh before detouring to a supply warehouse.  He glances about for any casual observers before slipping inside to what had become the dumping ground for broken bits of machinery and what not in the vain hope that it might prove useful again.  After all never you never knew what might prove useful out of useless scrap one day.

He slips inside the dark warehouse, doing one more quick check to make sure he hadn’t been noticed.  He grins despite the pain in his leg and rubs his hands together eagerly.  He makes a path to his stash of low grade which was really more of a sludge than any type of low grade to get slag-faced off of.  But beggars can’t be choosers.

He rolls his shoulders after after clearing the last piece of discussing scrap away from his hiding place.  He sits down heavily as leg finally gives.  He smacks it sharply with a snort.

“Che.”  He grunts and pulls out the goopy cubes that barely give off a glow thru all of the sludge.  “Just need to take the edge off,” he mutters and slugs back half of the first cube in one go.  His free hand digging at the metal of his thigh as he drank.

He pulls the cube from his lips to belch before stiffening from the pain racing thru his substructure.  He tosses the sludge aside to claw at the armor plates encasing his thigh.  His engine snarling as he tears it from his frame.  He tosses it aside, going directly for his softer substructure.

Yanking and pulling, he rips into the lighter metal.  Energon begins to flow with each digging pass of his digits until there is nothing between himself and his protoform.

He pants and leans over to stare at the thigh that still burns.  His engine howls in frustration as he is unable to see the cause clearly.  He grabs his knee and pulls the entire leg from its hip socket.

Wires snap and hiss.  Minor fuel lines rupture and spurt their liquids onto to the floor to mix with the low grade sludge.

He stares into the gaping gore of his leg, read to kill it, until he starts and drops the leg.  He drags his frame back with a screech of metal on the floor.  His spark racing in denial of what he had just seen.

But his optics remain trained on the hunk of slag that had been his leg as it twitches about with movement it should not have been capable of once pulled from a frame.

He watches closely as small things make themselves known in the twitching mass of energon coated metal-gore.  Small things that consume the leg quickly as their number grow.  Small things whose needle teeth shred the remaining pieces of metal before pulling back to begin the replication process.

He focuses on one of those small things as it pulls back from gorging itself.  A seam splits along its cranial case before running the length of its frame.  The two halves wobble comically for a moment, their simple internal workings on display for a moment then the growth begins to surround this split wound.  Then the one becomes two, the two becomes four, the four becomes eight, and so on.

He works his jaw soundlessly as he watches the leg quickly be consumed down to even the struts.  So taken by the horror of the display, he does not notice the line of small things crawling over the ground towards him until his optics are drawn down to his remaining ped.

His arm comes up and transformers into a blaster cannon,  He shoots the small things that chew on his ped.  He swears as his ped is blown to bits with them.  He steadies himself and takes aim at the last bits of metal that had been a leg but pauses.

A mass of small things swirls together in a bizarre dance.  They focus on him as he starts to fire blindly in rising panic at the approaching mass.  A mass that weaves easily out of the way of the blind shots.

Others are quickly drawn by the sounds of blaster fire and screams.  They storm into the dumping warehouse, sure an enemy is attacking.  The first to respond to the explosions pull of short though as they watch the scene unfold in front of them.

The mass of small things had swarmed the mech, going straight for his optics.  Optics which now goop and puss bubbles as they are consumed.  The mech’s screams echo in the warehouse as the ones consuming his optics drill straight to his processor.

Digits dig and rake at facial plates to get at the small things that eat, split, and begin to eat again.  Energon spurts from his throat as a hole opens, and those small things, now too numerous to be contained within his helm, flow down his body to join the others.  They bury into the gaps between the heavy metal armor plates first to get at the softer bits first.  The mech still chokes on his energon as he is eaten from the inside out, alive.

After all...if the spark stops, the metal will grow cold and the small things do hate cold metal.  So he will live until there is nothing left but his spark to be consumed.


End file.
